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1.4. Types of contracts. Abbreviations
In order to speed up the preparation of contract documents and to minimise possibility of errors in them, a unified standardised form of contract documents, the Master Pattern for Contract Documents, has been developed. It establishes principles and regulations for the construction of standardised forms of documents used in foreign trade, like Supplement to contract, Order and Order confirmation.
Supplement to contract is a business document which is an integral part of the contract, containing amendments or additions to the previously agreed contract conditions. The supplement should also be agreed on and signed by both the exporter and the importer.
Order is a business document presenting the importer’s offer for dealing which contains specific conditions of a future transaction.
Order Confirmation is a business document presenting the exporter’s message containing unclaused acceptance of the order conditions. The Master pattern has also been accepted as a basis for standardised forms of enquiries and offers, used at pre-contract stages of dealing [5, P.131 – 132].
Different firms and organisations trading regularly, work out standardised forms of contracts for typical deals. Such standardised contracts are printed and include typical rights and duties of the contracting sides in selling and buying some goods and services. There are special columns for the names of the Buyer and Seller, names of goods, their quantity, prices and delivery terms. In case of declining or adding some terms, people use supplementary columns in a contract form.
Standardised forms of export and import deals differ greatly and it makes them two general types of contracts [13, P.146]. Thus, there are export and import contracts. They reflect different positions of buyers and sellers in trading. Contracts in import trade are called orders, and their submission warrancy, and delivery terms, as well as sanctions are much harder towards the sellers than those ones in export trade. Standardised forms of import contracts are sent to potential buyers before getting commercial proposals and, actually, before striking a deal. The languages of contracts are agreed upon on the both sides. It goes without saying that information and style are kept the same not depending on the language of contract.
As textual varieties, contracts are divided into administrative-managerial, financial-economical, advertising, scientific-technical, and artistic-publicational contracts*. Functional spheres of their circulation can be easily guessed from names of contract types in this classification, and are the subject of economic, rather than linguistic, study.
Contracts may be differentiated by the subject of a deal. There are export contracts for the sale of oil products, machinery tools, grain, timber, the supply of goods, etc. Orders in import trade deal with ordering and purchasing goods. They are often supported with requests, remindings, verifications of different terms, guarantee and waving inspection letters, and many others.
Goods in international trade are transported with the help of multimodal (door-to-door) shipment. In contracts delivery and acceptance terms are marked with the International Commercial Terms (Incoterms) [10, P.16]. So, contracts can be classified in accordance with the way of delivery. Most of Incoterms are represented as abbreviations.
The usage of abbreviations, conventional symbols and contractions is typical of all kinds of documents. Abbreviations are abundant, and there are special dictionaries to decode them. They serve as signs of the code supposed to be known only to the “initiated” [3, P.316].
On the whole, there are 14 official Incoterms of deliverance. They denote:
1. The point of deliverance. EX Works means that the seller’s only responsibility is to make the goods available at his premises. EX Ship means that the seller shall make the goods available to the buyer on board the ship at the destination named in the sales contract. EX Quay means that the seller makes the goods available to the buyer on the quay at the destination named in the sales contract.
2. The way of deliverance. FOB means Free on Board. The goods are placed on board a ship by the seller at a port of shipment named in the sales contract. FAS means Free Alongside Ship. That means that goods should be placed alongside the ship to fulfil the seller’s obligations. FOR / FOT mean Free on Rail / Free on Truck. Truck here relates to the railway wagons, and that makes these abbreviations synonymous. FOB Airport is based on the same main principle as the ordinary FOB term. The seller fulfils his obligations by delivering the goods to the air carrier at the airport of departure.
3. Payment terms. C & F means Cost and Fright. The seller must pay the costs and fright necessary to bring the goods to the named destination, but the risk of loss or damage to the goods is transferred from the seller to the buyer when the goods pass the ship’s rail in the port of shipment. CIF means Cost, Insurance and Fright. This term is basically the same as C & F but with the addition that the seller has to procure marine insurance against the risk of loss or damage to the goods during the carriage.
Thus, in Chapter 1 we have made an attempt to clarify some items of the topic. They are the following:
The nature of the English of documents writing is determined by its stylistic realisation in written English. The style of official documents possesses its own features which are reflected in standardised forms of different documents. They are peculiarities of the vocabulary, grammar and syntactic constructions, which are the subject of consideration in the practical part of this paper.
The main problem of writing contracts is embodied in the notion of stylistic use. Formal style of business English is rather hard to obtain and to follow. It remains mostly in written form, and its peculiarities should be strictly observed. Some theoretical problems of its functioning have already been considered. Nevertheless, informal English influences it greatly, and even in routine papers we may find deviations from the accepted form.
It can be explained by the fact that business is made by people, and not robots. A person’s individuality, as well as emotions and feelings, more and more often peer into a cool and logical world of business, creating new problems and possibilities of business English functioning in texts of contracts and other documents.
We have also defined contract as a typical realisation of formal business English which possesses the same stylistic features and follows the same goals as other kinds of business correspondence.
Contents of contract also have specific clauses, and they ensure division of contracts into certain types in accordance with a side initiating a deal, a sphere of making a deal, types of goods and their delivery terms. Very often a way of deliverance is encoded with the help of special abbreviations. Contracts also possess remarkable linguistic features revealed in their texts, and they are the subject of Chapter 2.
Chapter 2. Linguistic peculiarities of contracts
2.1. Contract as a type of text and its stylistic characteristics
From the linguistic point of view, a contract is a type of a document, because any agreement is a completed document fixing some information. As a type of text, contract has its own specific characteristics. Stylistic peculiarities of all document texts are:
1. concreteness, conciseness, clearness of the stated idea;
2. high capacity of information;
3. strict logic;
4. clear rhythm of sentences;
5. accenting on the main idea with the help of word repetitions;
6. absence of connotational information;
7. a special system of clichés and stamps;
8. usage of abbreviations, conventional symbols and marks;
9. usage of terms in their direct semantic meaning; preferential usage of monosemantic words;
10. division of a text into chapters, paragraphs, points, often numbered (clear compositional structure of a document);
11. usage of definite syntactic models;
12. graphic decoration of a document: quality of paper, quantity and quality of illustrations, size and kind of print.
The main features of the style of contract are:
1. steady system of linguistic means in the text of contract;
2. lack of emotional colouring;
3. decoding character of language;
4. usage of a special symbolic system;
5. definite syntactic structure (the 12 above-enumerated items).
The style of contract defines some peculiarities and techniques of its writing. Making contracts is different in some points from writing business letters, such as an offer, an inquiry, a complaint, etc. Some considerations important for business letters are not important for contracts, and v.v. The main difference is that any contract is made up by two contracting parties and contains information about many subjects. So all points are to be approved by both parties. There are certain clearly definable requirements for how to write contracts.
Generally, contracts should be formal, complete, clear, concrete, correct and concise.* In contracts all possible informational details are not suitable. So, while writing contracts we must observe all peculiarities of standard English grammar, vocabulary use and stylistic appropriation. A formal contract or agreement requires considerations of neatness and attractive arrangement. Completeness of any contract suggests the scope of all significant facts that have reference to the issue of the agreement. Actually, you are expected to explain what, how, and when you are going to deal with your partner.
The next element, - clearness, - is one of the most important, because much depends on it. Clearness could be reached by the use of simple short words, phrases and paragraphs where the both parties of a contract explain their intentions and issues. Clearness of any arguments actually defines your striking a deal or not.
The component which is closely connected with the previous one is concreteness. Concreteness of a contract or an agreement is a part and a parcel of any legal document. Besides that, the longer the document is, the more attractive and vivid its contents should be.
The next two components are also significant. They are correctness and conciseness. Correctness involves proper grammar use (tense-aspect forms of the verb, verbals, articles, etc.), vocabulary use, punctuation and formal style. Grammar should be checked with a special care, otherwise it may produce a poor impression of the document and non-seriousness of your interests. Conciseness is usually achieved by the use of minimum words to express maximum of information.
As it has been noted above, any contract should be simple and clear, concise and brief. Commercial correspondence often suffers from an old-fashioned, pompous style of English which complicates the message and gives the reader the feeling that he is reading a language he does not understand. Though the language of contract is perhaps the most formal among all kinds of business correspondence, and the vocabulary of such correspondence is very specific, which is connected with its character and a great number of legal terms, it should not be archaic. It should be clear enough in its meaning.
The style, however, should not be too simple as it may become discourteous and sound rude. Linguists (G. Leech, J. Svartvik, Ch. Fries, O. Jespersen, M. Joos, I.V. Arnold, B.A. Ilyish, E.M. Gordon, etc.) recommend the following stylistic devices that might make agreements and contracts more polite: complex sentences joined with conjunctions are preferable, rather than short sentences; passive constructions rather than active; full forms rather than abbreviated forms, where necessary.
The right tone should be neutral, devoid of a pompous language on one hand, and an informal or colloquial language on the other hand. Therefore, inappropriate vocabulary, idioms, phrasal verbs are not allowed at all.
The both contracting parties should not experience any difficulties in obtaining information, they should be able to understand what is written. Misunderstandings are caused by a lack of thought and care. It may happen if we use a lot of abbreviations, figures and prepositions.
Abbreviations are very useful, because they are very quick to write and easy to read. But the both parties are expected to know what the abbreviations stand for. If one of the partners is not absolutely certain that the abbreviations are easily recognised he / she should not use it.
The symbol &, which means in English and, is used in some terms like C&F (Cost and Fright), C&I (Cost and Insurance). But is marked as # in contract texts. The symbol № is used instead of the word number. In American English the symbol # means number as well, but it is used in different tables and graphics, and not in the text. It is never used, however, to denote numbers of houses.
Very often in contracts Latin abbreviations are used, for example e.g. (for example), et al. (and others), etc. (and so on), v.v. (quite the opposite), i.e. (that means). Also they use English abbreviations ltd. (limited), Bros. (brothers), encl. (enclosed), dols. (dollars), etc. [4, P.45 – 46].
The use of figures instead of words for sums can create many problems for people. To avoid any possibility of confusion, it is necessary to write sums in both figures and words, e.g. $ 9.897.44 (nine thousand, eight hundred and ninety-seven dollars, forty-four cents). It is also a norm to put only dollars (pounds, etc.) in words and cents (pence, etc.) in figures only, e.g. $ 100.50 (one hundred dollars and 50 cents). From the above-written it is clear that the symbols £ (pounds) and $ (dollars), in documents in particular, are put before the sum and their usage is not of any mistake.
Spelling rules, punctuation and grammar use should all be checked over thoroughly. Still, there are some other ways in which inaccuracy may spoil the contract paper. A special attention should be paid to titles, names, addresses, references, prices, specifications, enclosures, etc., which are also of a great importance in texts of contracts.
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